of him, that his advice would probably not be taken,
but that, if anything were to go wrong, it would be
certainly the foreign doctor who would be blamed.
Very soon, indeed, he came to the opinion that the
low diet and constant bleedings, to which the unfortunate
Princess was subjected, were an error; he drew the
Prince aside, and begged him to communicate this opinion
to the English doctors; but it was useless. The
fashionable lowering treatment was continued for months.
On November 5, at nine o’clock in the evening,
after a labour of over fifty hours, the Princess was
delivered of a dead boy. At midnight her exhausted
strength gave way. When, at last, Stockmar consented
to see her; he went in, and found her obviously dying,
while the doctors were plying her with wine.
She seized his hand and pressed it. “They
have made me tipsy,” she said. After a
little he left her, and was already in the next room
when he heard her call out in her loud voice:
“Stocky! Stocky!” As he ran back
the death-rattle was in her throat. She tossed
herself violently from side to side; then suddenly
drew up her legs, and it was over.
The Prince, after hours of watching, had left the
room for a few moments’ rest; and Stockmar had
now to tell him that his wife was dead. At first
he could not be made to realise what had happened.
On their way to her room he sank down on a chair while
Stockmar knelt beside him: it was all a dream;
it was impossible. At last, by the bed, he, too,
knelt down and kissed the cold hands. Then rising
and exclaiming, “Now I am quite desolate.
Promise me never to leave me,” he threw himself
into Stockmar’s arms.
The tragedy at Claremont was of a most upsetting kind.
The royal kaleidoscope had suddenly shifted, and nobody
could tell how the new pattern would arrange itself.
The succession to the throne, which had seemed so
satisfactorily settled, now became a matter of urgent
doubt.
George III was still living, an aged lunatic, at Windsor,
completely impervious to the impressions of the outer
world. Of his seven sons, the youngest was of
more than middle age, and none had legitimate offspring.
The outlook, therefore, was ambiguous. It seemed
highly improbable that the Prince Regent, who had
lately been obliged to abandon his stays, and presented
a preposterous figure of debauched obesity, could ever
again, even on the supposition that he divorced his
wife and re-married, become the father of a family.
Besides the Duke of Kent, who must be noticed separately,
the other brothers, in order of seniority, were the
Dukes of York, Clarence, Cumberland, Sussex, and Cambridge;
their situations and prospects require a brief description.
The Duke of York, whose escapades in times past with
Mrs. Clarke and the army had brought him into trouble,
now divided his life between London and a large, extravagantly
ordered and extremely uncomfortable country house where
